The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have made it possible for enterprises to sell products and services by using the WWW to describe offers, using various means such as WWW forms or electronic mail to conduct transactions. This form of selling is based around the catalogue model that originated in the 19th Century, where the WWW site substitutes for the paper catalogue, and the postal service is replaced by the modern online equivalent.
Many enterprises currently use the telephone to replace or augment the catalogue model. A customer can call the organisation and purchase goods and services interactively over the telephone. This has the advantage that a customer can interact directly with a Customer Service Representative (“CSR”), but has the disadvantage that the telephone is a non-visual medium.
The need to handle large numbers of customers simultaneously, and the concurrent need to manage a pool of CSRs, has led to the development of the call centre, and the development of specialised software control packages to determine how incoming customer calls are routed to CSRs.
It is possible to combine the catalogue model of WWW selling with the telephone call centre (and other communication channels) to produce what is often called contact centre. The contact centre is like a telephone call centre, but instead of CSRs handling only telephone calls, they may be expected to handle customer communications in a variety of formats: FAX, electronic mail, telephone and WWW are typical. A contact centre is characterised by multiple contact or communication channels, and a pool of CSRs who interact with customers to provide services, products or support. The contact centre provides the illusion of a single point of contact for customers on a regional, national or even international basis. U.S. Pat. No. 5,848,143 (Geotel Communications) discloses a contact center capable of handling both traditional telephone calls and Internet calls where, in the case of the latter, the customer contact can involve multimedia exchanges.
The current dominant method for a customer to contact an enterprise for help is to dial an 800 telephone number. Accordingly, it is known to provide for the establishment of telephone contact between a person browsing a website and a CSR associated with the site. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,862 (Bell Atlantic Network Services) discloses a system in which a web server provides a telephone number which the customer's browser recognises as such and passes to an autodialler where it is used to automatically dial into a contact center.
The internet, as well as giving rise to the emergence of contact centers, has also made online communication between private individuals commonplace. The vast amount of information available from websites has meant that a particularly powerful communication mechanism is one involving “follow-me page push” between a group where one group member can “push” a web page URL to other group members so that all members can colocate on the same web page.
It is known to provide such a mechanism in the context of a “shop with a friend” experience for co-browsing web sites. Example services are those offered by Land's End (www.landsend.com) and Webline (www.webline.com)
However, such co-browsing may still give rise to queries that the participants would like assistance in answering. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and service system for facilitating the invitation of an assistant entity into a communication session conducted over the internet or other network.